March 12, 2019

The question in the court of public opinion is: Why didn't the leaders and managers at those elite institutions of higher education pick up on the number of alleged make-believe athletes being admitted?

The question in the courts of law will be how many of those arrested in what could be called AthleteGate will take a plea and spare the nation's Ivies raw disclosures in trials? Such trials could force university presidents and deans to resign.

The alleged scam which took place in the big Brandnames in higher education, ranging from Yale to Georgetown, involved having coaches and other kinds of administrators in the loop designating applicants as potential valued additions to the athletic teams. However, the applicant would not possess that ability, talent, or track record.

For example, allegedly former women's soccer coach at Yale - Rudy Meredith - accepted payments totaling about $1.2 million to put together faux packages of athletic credentials. It would be under that athletic umbrella that the applicant would be assessed for admission. As is well known, athletes are valuable to both the college's finances and branding.

There were others also indicted in Boston who were in the loop on AthleteGate. They include actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. All together, about 40 have been fingered. Here is coverage by InsideHigherEducation.

But they are only the ones on the direct line of fire.

Obviously shade has been thrown on the values and management of elite universities. Why was such autonomy provided to athletic departments? What was the structure of oversight?

And, of course, there could be rage among the applicants who weren't admitted. Had the seat they could have had - and the well-connected professional future - been illegally and unethically given to some rich kids whose parents could afford to pony up BigBribes?

What cans of worms - and not only in the admissions process - will be opened by that level of rage?

Need affordable help strategically planning and putting together content? That ranges from blog posts and e-books to planning/scripting podcasts and creating traditional speeches. Complimentary consultation on how to generate influence and sell without paying high rates, janegenova374@gmail.com.

H&R Block, once a scaling business and trusted brand, is in trouble. Here is the transcript from its March 7, 2019 investor conference call.

Of course, there are many factors in its downward trajectory.

Investment experts frequently cite its inability to accommodate digitalization of its niche. Just think TurboTax.

From a consumer perspective, what will eventually knock the corporation out of the box for preparing taxes for Everyman and Everywoman is price. The competition has figured out how to make the fee structure of H&R Block seem, well, nutty.

For instance, to prepare my business/personal tax return Tax 29 charged me 50 bucks. I showed them the 2017 return done by H&R Block, which billed me $440. The head of the Tax 29 office assessed that he would have billed me 80 bucks for the same kind of 2017 return.

Right now, Tax 29 only operates in three states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and California.

When it expands nationally - and when more discount preparation services gain traction - H&R Block could become a case study of what went very wrong among professional service providers in the second decade of the 21st century.

Among them could also be old-line models for law firms, public relations agencies, and management consulting.

For most lines of business, affordability has become a necessary brand attribute. H&R Block seems to have been asleep at the wheel on that one.

Need affordable help strategically planning and putting together content? That ranges from blog posts and e-books to planning/scripting podcasts and creating traditional speeches. Complimentary consultation on how to generate influence and sell without paying high rates, janegenova374@gmail.com.

The signature of ivy educational institutions had been Forever Professional Networks.

That was then.

The reality is that in this globalized, digitalized economy, we in professional life have to keep changing. So must our networks.

The barbarians are at the gates. Protecting and scaling our business are ongoing musts. Connections from the past - with the past being as recent as two months ago - may be more of a burden than a help.

A sign of that is the sustained brisk sales of the 2011 book "Necessary Endings."

Authored by executive coach Henry Cloud, it ranks on Amazon at 5,055. Here you can order it. Cloud presents example after example of what can happen to a career - and an entire organization - when past connections aren't ditched.

Not that the decision to assess our network is an easy one. There seems to be a human tendency to create and hang out in comfort zones. They make us feel safe, simplify our daily living, and even seemingly keep us in the not-getting-into-trouble box.

But they can also create increasing distance from awareness of and access to emerging opportunities.

A classic example in communications is any rigid bonding with those associated with old-line corporate thought leadership. The very tone of that can alienate target constituencies. Here are some reflections on how the "style guide" is changing.

In order to evaluate what connections continue to be useful and what new ones have to be developed is challenging. There is also no guarantee of making the right moves. That's because it requires figuring out what in our business is working, what isn't, and what needs to be added. Given the massive ambiguity, we can be frozen into sticking with the status quo.

Cloud suggests escape routes from the past. Yes, order the book.

Here, free to download, is my own book on finding the ramp out of what is and developing the courage to follow a fresh route of human connections. It is directed at the over-50 but the fundamentals apply to all generations. My iGen intern thinks it will help her shake off the "college experience" and go after that first real job as a "certified adult," as she puts it.

Another tool could be investing in a seminar custom-made to change behavior. Among them are what tutorials have been developed by Dale Carnegie Systems.

When my niche specialization in traditional executive communications collapsed, I enrolled in a Dale Carnegie hands-on workshop for marketing and sales. Job number-one was determining what we were going to sell.

That, of course, goes back to the Ted Levitt insight about the importance of broadly defining what business we really are in. Had the railroads recognized they were in the transportation one, not the narrow railcar box, they could have continued to scale in the era of airplane travel.

There is also the advantage of having a one-on-one coach. Unlike therapy, the objective is professional success. The focus is not curing but determining how to bypass what gets in the way.

My communications clients who hired coaches report that the most effective kind of coaching is that which operates narrowly on achieving the objective. That seemed to them far more important than developing a relationship with the coach.

The need to purge the past isn't new. Way back in the 20th century Judith Viorst published what was then groundbreaking. That was the book "Necessary Losses." Essentially it gave us permission to dump those relationships, ranging from graduate school to our first few jobs. No surprise, it still ranks high on Amazon. Here you can order it.

The good news is that technology has provided a convenient (but still brutal) way to signal a good-bye. We can unfriend, remove, and block. Usually, it's a lousy investment in time to "talk it over." That only invites anything from defensiveness to an attack.

Reflection: There is a meme in some self-help programs. That's Drop The Rock. In the 21st century, that rock is usually an outdated network.

Need affordable help strategically planning and putting together content? That ranges from blog posts and e-books to planning/scripting podcasts and creating traditional speeches. Complimentary consultation on how to generate influence and sell without paying high rates, janegenova374@gmail.com.

March 09, 2019

For about six months I had been strategically planning and creating promotional content for a one-player IT fixit service. It was only by accident that I discovered that particular entrepreneur also was operating another line of business: music production.

Side hustles or setting up multiple sources of income have become downright required in the current volatile economy.

More professionals, even the buttoned-down rigid professional-services types, are learning that.

Unfortunately, for some it had been too late.

For example, early adopters of blogging played only in that box. When BigMedia moved in, their source of income imploded. Had they other hustles going they wouldn't have wound up financially and professionally stranded.

However, what remains the branding must is: Don't confuse clients and customers with a multiple identity. Make it your business to keep the enterprises separate. Here is the article I published on that.

Usually, that's possible.

From the get-go, a new client and I are focused on segregating his academic communications niche enterprise from his long-term memoir-writing specialization. That entails making decisions not only about "owned" marketing communications material such as his own websites, blogs, emails, podcasts, and in-person presentations.

Also, he has to figure out how to position and package himself on social networks. What should his LinkedIn Profile capture? That's where tough marketing work is required. Social networks must operate on the macro level to create an inclusive enough identity to cover most hustles. What he is moving toward is an identity as a communications strategist.

All this isn't new, of course. It goes all the way back to the early days of mass entrepreneurship in the U.S.

During that Stalin-like purge of middle-aged middle managers in corporate America, we exiles had to determine what we could sell as small businesspeople and how. That took time - and guidance from branding experts. Probably that was the beginning of the growth of the executive coach.

For instance, a first step was to put myself out there as a generalist in public relations writing, not a specialist in thought leadership ghostwriting. The latter was too narrow. Of course, though, I developed customized snail-mail promotions focused on niches. Typical was pitching financial institutions such as American Express on my track record in credit cards. The folks at American Express only knew me as that.

Branding exists to simplify purchasing decisions. That means job number-one for those with multiple sources of income is to do the initial positioning and packaging so that clients and customers have an unambiguous snapshot of what you are selling, what are the unique benefits, and the advantages to them of the pricing.

Yes, sometimes the brands can be fused. The synergy will bring in unexpected business.

There has been my coaching those over-5o enterprise Download BACKGROUNDERJaneGenovaCoachingOver-50. It seeped into my more general marketing communications line of work. Currently, more revenue comes from the latter than the former. Large and medium-sized career transition firms wanted me to prepare promotional material for them, not coach their clients.

Obviously, creating side hustles as earning hedges is a complex branding mission.

Need affordable help strategically planning and putting together content? That ranges from blog posts and e-books to planning/scripting podcasts and creating traditional speeches. Complimentary consultation on how to generate influence and sell without paying high rates, janegenova374@gmail.com.

March 06, 2019

Among PR folks, there is the old warning about featuring an actual employee in recruiting material. Soon enough, the man or woman could be part of a high-profile media story about a drug ring in the geographic region - or even inside the company.

Another common anecdote was the peril of the celebrity spokesperson. Given celebrity per se which loosens the sense of boundaries, there's no predicting what trouble that spokesperson will wind up in.

The AXIOS Harris Poll found how many corporations have declined on the image scale. And part of the problem was the tarnished brand of the Celebrity CEO. As a tactic to boost public opinion - and good will - chief communications officers have been touting the CEOs who have pull force in the media game.

But, as is well known: The media giveth and the media taketh away. In that shift not only is shade thrown on celebrity CEOs. Damage is done to the very image of the corporation.

The classic example is Elon Musk's recent seemingly odd behavior. Both he and the company he leads Tesla have suffered in the reputation game.

The takeaway from the AXIOS Harris poll is for the in-house communications team and the outside PR agencies to not put all their eggs in positioning and packaging the CEO leadership.

Need affordable help strategically planning and putting together content? That ranges from blog posts and e-books to planning/scripting podcasts and creating traditional speeches. Complimentary consultation on how to generate influence and sell without paying high rates, janegenova374@gmail.com.

There is now a seventh female lawyer who joined the class action lawsuit alleging that being perceived to be on the infamous Mommy Track could be a form of slo-mo career suicide. Here is the coverage in Law.com.

In the court of public opinion, the MoFo brand will be roughed up.

After all, this is not only the #MeToo era. There is a fertility crisis in developed economies such as the U.S. Retiring baby boomers and oldest members of Gen X are not being replaced by newbies to the labor market. That means entitlement programs such as Social Security are in funding danger. The US needs to encourage women to reproduce.

If MoFo is wise, it will rush to settlement. It doesn't want this litigation to make it to trial.

Need affordable help strategically planning and putting together content? That ranges from blog posts and e-books to planning/scripting podcasts and creating traditional speeches. Complimentary consultation on how to generate influence and sell without paying high rates, janegenova374@gmail.com.

March 04, 2019

In 4 minutes AOC masterminded her return from irrelevance. Those 4 minutes consisted of her pointed questions to Michael Cohen at the U.S. House Oversight Committee.

She had gone from her 15 minutes of fame to oblivion after being scapegoated for the Amazon pull-out from creating a second headquarters in the New York City Metro area.

What confirms that she has returned as a player is the return of negative media about her. Here is an example published on MarketWatch.

As some watchers of The AOC phenomenon has observed, her distinct edge is that she is too young to run for U.S. President. Therefore, she doesn't have to stay on one campaign message. She can wander all over the conceptual and rhetorical map. That could make her the loudest voice in the room.

Need affordable help strategically planning and putting together content? That ranges from blog posts and e-books to planning/scripting podcasts and creating traditional speeches. Complimentary consultation on how to generate influence and sell without paying high rates, janegenova374@gmail.com.

March 03, 2019

There are client churn, haggling on price, and lower-price a la carte services established by alternative providers.

Untouched, though, at least currently, has been the top-tier of firms in niches such as law and public relations. Deep pockets go to them for bet-the-ranch issues and high-value transactions.

That untouchability could change, quickly or in slo-mo, during the coming economic downturn. Already, there have been projections about how even the elite firms in law could get whacked in the next recession. In-house legal departments could also be hit. One forecast is the loss of 10,250 jobs.

So, how many jobs, in agencies and in corporate communications departments, could be eliminated when the U.S. economy is impacted by the slowdown already occurring in other economies? In some, experts observe, it's accelerating.

According to the Holmes Report, published in 2018, growth in U.S. public relations firms declined from 4.6% the year before to 2.6%.

Nibbling at firms' market share are upstart providers. They include digital-savvy newbie college graduates hanging out shingles around the world. They provide all kinds of affordable services, both domestically and as outsourcing. Increasingly, the influence game is being played digitally.

More help-wanted for public relations services on Craigslist hammer: Agencies need not apply.

Those mouse bites could become what used to be firms' lunch.

Also, there is a question how quickly old-line brandname public relations firms are adopting to the shift of communications to be primarily in marketing and, yes, sales.

More and more of my clients and prospects need hands-on experience in selling. A track record in generating Calls to Action (CTA) is the most marketable credential in landing assignments.

Back in 2017, the USC Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism surveyed those in the public relations loop. Only 8% believed public relations would continue as a stand-alone function in 5 years. Instead the focus would be right smack on marketing/sales. Here is that report.

Obviously, in-house communications departments also have to converge with marketing and, yes, the actual sales force. Those which don't will be vulnerable to decimation in manpower. Here is Weber Shandwick's insight on convergence.

Overall, convergence of functions is nothing new. When Lee Iacocca was leading the turnaround at Chrysler and Lou Gerstner Jr. was restoring IBM, the corporatewide message was: We All Sell. I worked at both and at both I had to position and package all content to be marketing and selling tools. For example, I worked closely with the win-back accounts function.

What is new is that few players in what has been known as "public relations" can survive without the ability to construct innovative playbooks for clients and prospects on how to sell more, extend brands, and launch new products and services.

One wonders, then, why the trade publications such as Odwyperpr.com and PR Week still contain the term "PR" or "Public Relations" in their titles?

They would be clever to sponsor a global contest to identify a fresh inclusive concept, along with a logo. In itself that would be a platform to blast the message that the discipline had already made quantum leaps in integrating the convergence.

Reflection: The most useful seminar I had enrolled in had been the hands-on one in marketing and sales provided by Dale Carnegie Systems.

Not only did I pick up the fundamentals in language and tactics. I had to actually go out there and pitch a new service for my business. That was social-media content. Soon, a public affairs firm gave me a four-year litigation communications assignment in that niche.

During the past 18 months I knew exactly how to pitch my upstart enterprise in career content. It's no longer a startup.

Need affordable help strategically planning and putting together content? That ranges from blog posts and e-books to planning/scripting podcasts and creating job search material. Complimentary consultation on how to generate influence and sell without paying high rates, janegenova374@gmail.com.

March 02, 2019

What could be replacing it is the old-fashioned power of litigation. Yes, institutions and people pay attention to lawsuits.

Many recall how the liberal media presented the perception that Roman Catholic conservative teenager Nicholas Sandmann mistreated elderly Native American Nathan Phillips. That supposed man-handling included blocking his way and taunting him. At least that was what lefty The Washington Post published.

In response, Sandman filed a defamation lawsuit for $250 million. His lawyers are Nathan Phillips and Todd McMurtry. Here is a copy of the complaint.

The source of power, now is obvious, comes from thinking and acting like a lawyer.

The Washington Post has issued an editor's note about its original coverage of the Sandmann interaction with Phillips. Here is analysis of that by media Daily Mail. Essentially, the newspaper says that after more extensive review of the video about the incident it concludes that Sandmann did not block the free passage of Phillips or taunt him.

This is big. There are at least 3 major implications.

It is obvious that thinking and acting like a lawyer can be uniquely effective. Instead of hiring a public relations firm, go directly to a law firm specializing in litigation about X or Y and hire it. Will applications to law schools surge? That could happen.

In addition, this could signal the beginning of the end of the ability of the media to shape public perception. That is, this is the tipping point for high skepticism.

The third impact could be that the growing migration toward lefty economic ideology could be slowed down. Socialism might fade as a top Election 2020 issue.

Clearly, journalists should now incorporate that they have the U.S. legal system looking over their shoulder when they position and package coverage.

Battling litigation is an expensive, long-term process. Litigation is also a wild card. Sure legal experts can throw out there odds of winning or losing. But so many of those assessments of the merits of the case have been proved wrong by juries, decisions in bench trials, and settlements.

This development can be summed up: Litigation 1, Media 0

Need affordable help strategically planning and putting together content? That ranges from blog posts and e-books to planning/scripting podcasts and creating traditional speeches. Complimentary consultation on how to generate influence and sell without paying high rates, janegenova374@gmail.com.

February 22, 2019

Sure, old-line players can turn themselves around, even in a globalized digital era. Just look at how The New York Times Company pulled itself out of a near-death experience.

But. in general, when we look at one-time BigBrand companies from the 20th century we think: That dog don't hunt.

That's why we wonder if Oracle of Omaha Warren Buffett and VSM (very smart woman) Oprah Winfrey are losing their understanding of capitalism.

Recently, Buffett lost billions (4, to be exact) in his investment in Kraft Heinz. At least, on paper. That started with his partnership with 3G Capital in 2013 to purchase shares in Heinz. Then in 2015 Heinz acquired Kraft.

Winfrey, on paper, has seen about $560 million of her wealth decline as WW (the old Weight Watchers) is unable to pull off a comeback. It tried repositioning and repackaging for the wellness niche. Still, that dog don't hunt.

The lesson here for investors, even the small-time ones like those near retirement, is to be wary of companies stuck in the 20th century. Their mindsets tend to be inward-looking. Meanwhile, upstart competition is eating their lunch, dinner, and, next, their breakfast.

Need affordable help strategically planning and putting together content? That ranges from blog posts and e-books to planning/scripting podcasts and creating traditional speeches. Complimentary consultation on how to generate influence and sell without paying high rates, janegenova374@gmail.com.